Leaders Hearts dropped Scottish Premiership points for the third game running as they played out a goalless draw with Motherwell.<\/p>\n
The visitors had goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow to thanks for some superb saves as Motherwell created the better chances.<\/p>\n
The Tynecastle side go five points clear but Celtic, who have two games in hand, can move within two should they beat Hibernian on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Motherwell and Hearts produced one of the games of the season when they last met back in August as Derek McInnes’ side rallied from 3-0 down to snatch a draw at Tynecastle.<\/p>\n
Hopes were high for a similarly free-flowing game, but chances were few and far between in the first half.<\/p>\n
Stuart Findlay was robbed of possession in his own penalty area by Elijah Just, who squared for Tawanda Maswanhise, but the in-form Zimbabwe international could not make a clean connection and the chance was lost.<\/p>\n
Motherwell had the ball in the net when Elliot Watt clipped a cross into the box and Callum Hendry stretched to convert. The celebrations among the home fans were shortlived, though, as the VAR ruled the goal out for offside.<\/p>\n
Just passed up a glorious opportunity early in the second half when he headed straight at Schwolow having been picked out beautifully by Maswanhise.<\/p>\n
After being largely outplayed in the first half, Hearts came out with greater purpose and quicker tempo after the break.<\/p>\n
They thought they had taken the lead when Lawrence Shankland met a corner to send a looping header goalwards, only for Hendry to intervene with a brilliant goalline clearance.<\/p>\n
Moments later Maswanhise had a goal ruled out for offside before Schwolow produced three big saves in as many minutes to deny substitute Ibrahim Said, Lukas Fadingar and a free-kick from Callum Slattery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leaders Hearts dropped Scottish Premiership points for the third game running as they played out a goalless draw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-317061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}